I meant "big" sinkhole.
I was in the Imperial Valley, 12 miles from Mexicali, Mexico during the 7.2 temblor.
I was on the floor when I could hear the low rumble for a few seconds, then a small and quick vibration began. It was at that point that we all knew it was going to be a big one with the amount of warning we were getting. The house swayed vastly with the first big jolt, then the ground rocked one way, and the house swaying in the opposite direction, everything starts shaking, glass breaking and flying everywhere, power goes out, lamps fall down, large furniture dance across the room, the rumble is very loud and you have to yell to talk, you're unable to walk without using a wide stance in your steps and all you care about is getting everyone out. When the book shelves that were nailed to the wall began to break apart, we all moved away from the door frames and out of the house to the front yard. Car alarms were going off as all the cars were shifting out of place. The sound of water rushing to the streets from the swimming pool in the backyard spilled gallons of water in a few seconds. After what seemed to be a lifetime in 60 seconds, we try to slow down our hearts and minds and make sure we are all ok. My father was barefoot in the kitchen with glass flying all around him, so he went out through the back and meet us in the front yard. We all knew to expect aftershocks. We've all experienced many many earthquakes before, and this was the largest of them all.
Most of the doors will need to be readjusted as they no longer close all the way, lots of tile will need to be grouted again as they cracked and came apart, new cracks in your driveway and walls are exposed and the smell of gas comes from nearby homes. Going back inside to see the second floor with every piece of furniture moved or tipped over, with all your contents and belongs thrown around the room. Anything made of glass is broken, and then the 3-5 magnitude aftershocks rocking the house every few minutes for hours on end make the clean up process very difficult as you evacuate the house with each shake. Moving the dinged up cars out of the garage to prevent further damage was done once we could open the garage door without power. No calls were nearly impossible to make, but text messages seemed to get through 50% of the time, requiring only 2 or 3 retries. Seeing neighbors come together to help each other was a nice sight to see.
Most gas stations were closed, looting was reported in isolated downtime areas and no electricity for hours for the city, with some parts of the city with no power until the next day. Most places were closed for Easter, but the few that were open were jammed with people once they quickly restored power and cleaned up. Stores could be seen through the windows completely trashed as products are all thrown to the ground. Sitting in traffic, you could feel the ground shaking still late in the night. Brick walls can be seen crumbled, gutters barely hanging onto roofs, large city water tanks damaged from the water thrashing around violently ultimately spilling over with high velocity. The entire city had lawn chairs in their front yards, many sleeping in their garages, living rooms or any other rooms with easy access to the outside in case another shake occurred in the night, which it did with a +5, waking everyone in my family. You become sleep deprived, experience some dizziness, nervousness, heart burn and other stressful symptoms.
Sinkholes and rock slides were reported along Interstate 8, but driving back to San Diego, I did not see any signs of these events. Even now in San Diego, 100 miles away from where I was, I can still feel a few shakes, mostly the 4.0's originating from the Imperial Valley and Northern Mexico. Again, we will all be sleeping with shoes, clothes, keys and whatever we can quickly put on in the event we have to get out of the house.
I'll post pics tomorrow once I get them via email.
